So call not waste that barren cone Above the floral zone, Where forests starve: It is pure use; What sheaves like those which here we glean and bind Of a celestial Ceres and the Muse? Ages are thy days, Thou grand affirmer of the present tense, And type of permanence! Firm ensign of the fatal Being, Amid these coward shapes of joy and grief, That will not bide the seeing! Hither we bring Our insect miseries to thy rocks; Where flowers each stone rosette and metope brave; Still is the haughty pile erect Of the old building Intellect. Complement of human kind, O barren mound, thy plenties fill! Thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times one sense Thou, in our astronomy An opaker star, Seen haply from afar, Above the horizon's hoop, A moment, by the railway troop, As o'er some bolder height they speed,- By errant gain, By feasters and the frivolous, Recallest us, And makest sane. Mute orator! well skilled to plead, And send conviction without phrase, Thou dost succor and remede The shortness of our days, And promise, on thy Founder's truth, FABLE. THE mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter Little Prig;' Bun replied, 'You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather To make up a year And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, I'll not deny you make A very pretty squirrel track; Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back, ODE. INSCRIBED TO W. H. CHANNING. THOUGH loath to grieve The evil time's sole patriot, I cannot leave My honied thought For the priest's cant, Or statesman's rant. If I refuse My study for their politique, Puts confusion in my brain. But who is he that prates With rifle and with knife! Or who, with accent bolder, Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer? I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook! And in thy valleys, Agiochook! The jackals of the negro-holder. The God who made New Hampshire With little men ; Small bat and wren House in the oak: If earth-fire cleave The upheaved land, and bury the folk, Virtue palters; Right is hence; Freedom praised, but hid; Funeral eloquence Rattles the coffin-lid. What boots thy zeal, That would indignant rend The northland from the south? The horseman serves the horse, 'Tis the day of the chattel, Web to weave, and corn to grind; Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind. There are two laws discrete, Not reconciled, Law for man, and law for thing; The last builds town and fleet, But it runs wild, And doth the man unking. "T is fit the forest fall, The steep be graded, The mountain tunnelled, The sand shaded, The glebe tilled, The prairie granted, The steamer built. |